- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
UC ANR staff appreciation and recognition awards were presented to 22 individuals and three teams on June 14 during a statewide Zoom event hosted by Human Resources.
Individual awards:
Stacey Amparano, Desert REC, for growing the Farm Smart program.
Sibani Bose, Nutrition Policy Institute, for her creative problem-solving.
Katie Churchill, UCCE Capitol Corridor, for sensitivity to the social, cultural and emotional needs of staff that clearly fosters inclusivity and a culture of open communication.
Julie Clark, UCCE Ventura County, for over 28 years of outreach on invasive insects and weeds, post-fire recovery and environmental issues.
Maria Fernandez, Development Services, for taking on tasks beyond her scope of work to help her team and bring projects to completion.
Terri Gonzalez, Kearney REC, for significantly improving organizational efficiency and productivity at Kearney, resulting in a greater level of effectiveness and customer service.
Jennifer Henkens, 4-H Capitol Corridor, for routinely going above and beyond, even in support of non-4-H colleagues.
Julia Kalika, Program Support Unit, for covering extra duties when PSU was short-staffed.
Rachel Lloyd, Office of the Controller and Business Services, for sustained exceptional performance, which helped her unit meet its goals for the client satisfaction survey.
Cristina Luquin, UCCE Central Sierra. As an Interim Program Supervisor, she has overseen four counties, five offices and 12 staff and mentored and trained all 12 staff in the CalFresh Central Sierra program.
Mario Monroy-Olivas, UCCE Tehama County, for his collaborative efforts with internal and external partners, which have resulted in expanded garden sites, an increase of extenders for nutrition education and youth engagement work.
Karen Motley, West Side Research & Extension Center, for helping the Lindcove REC staff review and improve their operational system, ensuring that they were executing tasks accurately and efficiently.
Kathleen Patrocinio, Sustainable Agricultural Research & Education Program, for coordinating the administrative and physical move of SAREP from the UC Davis campus to UC ANR, with five of seven staff positions vacant or in transition, including the director position.
Jacob Roberson, UCCE Fresno-Madera Small Farm Program, for assisting 52 farmers representing a total of 1,144 acres in applying to California's State Water Efficiency and Enhancement Program (SWEEP). The farmers received $4.3 million of incentives grant funding directly, which has been used to repair or install pump and irrigation system components.
Beatriz Rojas, UCCE Kern County, for initiating nutrition education with schools, head start classes and migrant worker families in locations where UCCE never before served clientele.
Becky Sisman, Human Resources, for helping resolve pay issues by working with ANR Payroll, HR Ops and UCPath.
Angela Urrea, Human Resources, for providing stellar customer service and support during UC ANR's unprecedented hiring boom, including identifying compliance issues and helping solve complicated wage issues.
Melissa Ussery, UCCE Sutter-Yuba, for her pivotal role in coordinating community partners to provide nutrition education for youth in Sutter County for a Sierra Health Foundation grant that had to be accomplished in a short time frame.
Karyn Utsumi, California Naturalist, for supporting 24 partner organizations in 15 counties in central and northern California. After being hired in October, she helped with 10 CalNat courses and two Climate Stewards courses.
Susan Weaver, Santa Clara County 4-H, for organizing and implementing a five-day nature camp for Latinx children K-3rd grade at Escuela Popular, a bilingual K-12 school in East San Jose. The camp increased public awareness of 4-H in the Latinx community and with new public and private partners.
Patrick West, Kearney REC, for exceptional performance in managing the physical plant staff and budget for Kearney REC.
Clara Wilshire, UCCE San Bernardino. An EFNEP educator for nearly 30 years, she promotes not only EFNEP but Master Gardeners, Master Food Preservers, and 4-H in San Bernardino County, which has expanded the reach of UCCE.
Team awards:
Program Support Unit – Bridgette Alvarez, Maria Alvarez, Sherry Cooper, Julia Kalika, PJ Kelly, Mariette Malessy and Kate Lyn Sutherland. For the UC ANR Statewide Conference, not only did the PSU provide exceptional services, they went above and beyond in response to feedback about the food nutrition and single-use ware. They were able to raise the nutrition quality of the snacks from ice cream and chips to vegetable and hummus. They were also able to persuade the facility to stop providing styrofoam single-use ware.
Nutrition Policy Institute Operations Transition Team – Kassandra Bacon, Celeste Felix, Danielle Lee, Erica Martinez Resendiz and Reka Vasicsek – for recruiting a new school district when a partner in a USDA study pulled out, then scrambling to collect student surveys and food and solid waste data over two days at 20 elementary schools for a solid 40 days of challenging work.
CalFresh Healthy Living, UCCE Tulare-Kings counties – Marina Aguilera, Elia Escalante, Grilda Gomez, Mariana Lopez, Arianna Nava, Alyssabeth Navarro and Teresa Spicer – for nurturing and leveraging strong partnerships with local organizations and school districts to collectively create meaningful and positive changes in the lives of people in their counties.
A recording of the STAR award presentations is posted at https://ucanr.edu/sites/anrstaff/All_Hands.
Dear Colleagues,
We are pleased to share the good news that UC President Michael Drake has confirmed the decision to proceed with a 2023 general salary increase program for policy-covered staff employees and academic appointees (i.e., employees not represented by a collective bargaining unit) at all locations, contingent upon state funding. In the event the current budget expectations are altered, UC President Drake will provide an updated announcement at that time.
For policy-covered staff employees, salary increases will be implemented as a general increase, where all eligible policy-covered staff employees would receive a 4.6% increase to their base salary. Although this year's salary program for policy-covered staff is not a merit program where performance impacts the amount of increase, the importance of the annual performance review process should not be discounted. All policy-covered staff employees should continue to receive, at least annually, a performance review per policy. This program is separate and distinct from any UC ANR Market Adjustment program. Please review the guidelines and eligibility criteria for policy-covered staff.
For policy-covered academic appointees, the academic salary scales will be increased by a general range adjustment of 4.6%. The adjustment to the academic salary scales will be effective July 1, 2023. The regular peer-review merit advancement process for policy-covered academic appointees will continue per academic personnel policy. This program is separate and distinct from any UC ANR Market Adjustment program. Guidelines and eligibility criteria for policy-covered academic appointees will be available on the website shortly.
Please note that this increase does not apply to represented employees and academic personnel who are receiving separate increases in accordance with applicable collective bargaining agreements.
Thank you for your continued efforts to improve and enrich more lives in more communities.
Glenda Humiston
Vice President
- Author: Patricia Glass, , HR Business Systems Analyst
Staff employees who weren't able to attend the Staff Performance Evaluations webinar on Tuesday may view the slide deck and recorded presentation, which are now posted on the Performance Management website.
The timeline includes links to the March 8 webinar and slide deck: https://ucanr.edu/sites/ANRSPU/Supervisor_Resources/Performance_Management/.
Career and contract employees with more than 6 months of service should complete their self-evaluation by March 25. Please check it out and get started soon!
The deadline to nominate staff for a STAR Award has been extended to 11:59 p.m. on Friday, April 17. This is in response to requests from a number of managers and supervisors whose workload is impacted by the COVID-19 situation and other competing priorities. Please use this extra time to recognize and nominate staff who have achieved great things during the last year, including those who have stepped up during the current emergency.
The program provides one-time $500 cash awards to eligible staff in recognition of outstanding achievement. Managers may nominate individuals and teams demonstrating exceptional performance, creativity, organizational abilities, work success and teamwork.
Policy-covered ANR staff and members of the Clerical Unit (CX) are eligible to be nominated for STAR awards. Staff in other collective bargaining units, academics and members of the Senior Management Group are not eligible to receive STAR awards.
Nomination forms and program guidelines are available on the UC ANR Human Resources website.
Send your nominations via e-mail to humanresources@ucanr.edu by Friday, April 17, 2020.
STAR Award winners will be celebrated during an ANR recognition event on June 18, 2020, even if it's a “virtual” Zoom event.
- Author: Michelle Simone, Communications Strategist, UC Office of the President
UC ANR is unique in the UC system. Its advisors and staff work in 57 out of 58 counties in the state, supporting Californians with university-based research in the areas of healthy families and communities; sustainable food systems; sustainable natural ecosystems; water, including quality, quantity and security; and pests — endemic and invasive pests and diseases. Administrative staff support business operations, development services, resource planning and management and more.
Although there was a longstanding desire to create a staff mentorship program, ANR leadership realized that their organizational complexity would require a unique and focuses approach. They deemed creating a mentorship program a priority people goal in the 2016-2020 strategic plan, and after several years in the making, the first Mentor Orientation took place in December 2018.
“To develop the ANR Staff Mentorship Program, we adapted from UCOP, UC Davis and external organization mentorship program models,” explained Learning and Development Coordinator Jodi Azulai. These efforts led to a nine-month program, which consisted of three in-person workshops and monthly meetings between mentors and mentees — most of which took place via phone- or video-conferencing due to the geographic spread of their work locations.
July 23, 2019, marked the end of the successful pilot year. Since participating in the program, two participants have moved to advanced job classifications. A majority of mentors reported that their mentorship experience helped them to learn about themselves and would benefit their careers.
“The mentorship program granted me the privilege and honor of having an exceptional mentor — a leader, role model and friend who helped me gain the confidence and guidance I needed to grow within UC ANR and beyond,” shared one participant.
“We each have so much to offer one another, whether we serve as a mentor or mentee. The hard part is finding the time to listen,” said another mentee. “When someone makes time to feel, understand and relate to another person, we all grow. It has a ripple effect.”
Among the programs encouraging outcomes are the following:
- 100% of program participants found that the program benefits mentees
- 94% of participants found that one-on-one meetings were meaningful and that participating in the program enhanced their self-awareness
- 89% observed professional growth as a result of their participation
- 88% found that participating in the program grew their interpersonal communication, leadership, technical and other skills
- 84% have identified actions to enhance their development as a result of participating
“We understood the benefits of mentoring relationships before our program began, but we now have photos, data and personal feedback from attendees that reflects the significance for continuing this program,” Azulai said.
She and her team plan to send a six-month follow-up survey to 2019 participants in January to learn how mentees have come to regard their personal and career development and outlook since participating in the program. The second Staff Mentorship Program cohort will begin in January 2020.
This story was originally published as part of a series on staff mentorship programs in UCNet.